To feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me.

October 27. 

October 27, 2017

P. M. — Up river. 

The third day of steady rain; wind northeast. The river has now risen so far over the meadows that I can just cross Hubbard's Great Meadow in my boat. 

Stedman Buttrick tells me that a great many ducks and large yellow-legs have been killed within a day or two. It is rather late for ducks generally. 

He says that the spruce swamp beyond Farmer's is called Fox Castle Swamp and has been a great place for foxes. 

Some days ago he was passing under a black oak on his land, when he saw the dust of acorn shells (or cups?) falling about him. Looking up, he saw as many as twenty (!) striped squirrels busily running out to ends of the twigs, biting off the nuts, running back and taking off the shells (cups?) and stowing the nuts away in their cheeks. 

I go up the river as far as Hubbard's Second Grove, in order to share the general commotion and excitement of the elements, – wind and waves and rain. A half-dozen boats at the landing were full, and the waves beating over them. It was hard work getting at and hauling up and emptying mine. It was a rod and a half from the water's edge. 

Now look out for your rails and other fencing-stuff and loose lumber, lest it be floated off. 

I sail swiftly, standing up and tipping my boat to make a keel of its side, though at first it is hard to keep off a lee-shore. I look for cranberries drifted up on the lee side of the meadows, but see few. It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. 

The reign of water now begins, and how it gambols and revels! Waves are its leaves, foam its blossoms. How they run and leap in great droves, deriving new excitement from each other! Schools of porpoises and blackfish are only more animated waves and have acquired the gait and game of the sea itself. The high wind and the dashing waves are very inspiriting. 

The clumps of that “west of rock” willow and a discolor are still thinly leaved, with peculiar silvery-yellow leaves in this light. 

The rising water is now rolling and washing up the river wreck of sparganium, etc., etc. Wool-grass tops appear thickly above the flood. 

When I turn about, it requires all my strength and skill to push the boat back again. I must keep it pointed directly in the teeth of the wind. If it turns a little, the wind gets the advantage of me and I lose ground. The wind being against the stream makes it rise the faster, and also prevents the driftwood from coming down. How many a meadow my boat’s bottom has rubbed over! I might perhaps consult with it respecting cranberry vines, cut-grass, pitcher-plant, etc., etc. 

I hear that Sammy Hoar saw geese go over to-day. The fall (strictly speaking) is approaching an end in this probably annual northeast storm. Thus the summer winds up its accounts. 

The Indians, it is said, did not look for winter till the springs were full. Long-continued rain and wind come to settle the accounts of the year, filling the springs for winter. The ducks and other fowl, reminded of the lateness thus, go by. The few remaining leaves come fluttering down. 

The snow-flea (as to-day) is washed out of the bark of meadow trees and covers the surface of the flood. The winter's wood is bargained for and being hauled. This storm reminds men to put things on a winter footing. There is not much more for the farmer to do in the fields. 

The real facts of a poet's life would be of more value to us than any work of his art. I mean that the very scheme and form of his poetry (so called) is adopted at a sacrifice of vital truth and poetry. Shakespeare has left us his fancies and imaginings, but the truth of his life, with its becoming circumstances, we know nothing about. The writer is reported, the liver not at all. Shakespeare's house! how hollow it is! No man can conceive of Shakespeare in that house. But we want the basis of fact, of an actual life, to complete our Shakespeare, as much as a statue wants its pedestal. A poet's life with this broad actual basis would be as superior to Shakespeare's as a lichen, with its base or thallus, is superior in the order of being to a fungus. 

The Littleton Giant brought us a load of coal within the week. He appears deformed and weakly, though naturally well formed. He does not nearly stand up straight. His knees knock together; they touch when he is standing most upright, and so reduce his height at least three inches. He is also very round-shouldered and stooping, probably from the habit of crouching to conceal his height. He wears a low hat for the same purpose. The tallest man looks like a boy beside him. He has a seat to his wagon made on purpose for him. He habitually stops before all doors. You wonder what his horses think of him, —that a strange horse is not afraid of him. His voice is deep and full, but mild, for he is quite modest and retiring, —really a worthy man, ’t is said. 

Pity he couldn’t have been undertaken by a committee in season and put through, like the boy Safford, been well developed bodily and also mentally, taught to hold up his head and not mind people’s eyes or remarks. It is remarkable that the giants have never correspondingly great hearts.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 27, 1857

It is exciting to feel myself tossed by the dark waves and hear them surge about me. See April 22, 1857 (“to hear the surging of the waves and their gurgling under the stern, and to feel the great billows toss us, with their foaming yellowish crests.”) and note to May 8, 1854 (“I feel exhilaration, mingled with a slight awe, as I drive before this strong wind over the great black-backed waves, cutting through them, and hear their surging and feel them toss me.”) and A Season for Sailing

The real facts of a poet's life would be of more value to us than any work of his art. See October 27, 1857 ("Is not the poet bound to write his own biography? Is there any other work for him but a good journal? We do not wish to know how his imaginary hero, but how he, the actual hero, lived from day to day.")

The Littleton Giant. See January 17, 1852 ("Saw a teamster coming up the Boston road this after noon, sitting on his load, which was bags of corn or salt, apparently, behind two horses and beating his hands for warmth. He finally got off and walked be hind, to make his blood circulate faster, and I saw that he was a large man. But when I came near him, I found that he was a monstrous man and dwarfed all whom he stood by, so that I did not know whether he was large or they were small. Yet, though he stood so high, he stooped considerably, more than anybody I think of, and he wore a flat glazed cap to conceal his height, and when he got into the village he sat down on his bags again. I heard him remark to a boy that it was a cold day, and it was; but I wondered that he should feel the cold so sensibly, for I thought it must take a long time to cool so large a body. I learned that it was Kimball of Littleton, that probably he was not twenty. The family was not large. Wild, who took the census, said so, and that his sister said he couldn't do much, — health and strength not much. It troubled him that he was so large, for people looked at him. There is at once something monstrous, in the bad sense, suggested by the sight of such a man. Great size is inhuman. It is as if a man should be born with the earth attached to him. I saw him standing up on a sled, talking with the driver, while his own team went on ahead; and I supposed from their comparative height that his companion was sit ting, but he proved to be standing. Such a man is so much less human; that is what may make him sad.")